Law of the Wolf Tower: The Claidi Journals Book 1, Tanith Lee [pocket ebook reader .TXT] 📗

LAW OF THE WOLF TOWER

Tanith Lee

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Gateway Introduction

Contents

Author’s Note

This Book

Excitement by Air

Him

The Lion in the Cage

The Escape

Hell?

Stormy Weather

Chariot Town

Trouble Always Follows

Flight

The Bandit Camp on the Move

Nightmares by Day

Peshamba

Changing Partners

Marshes of the Moon

His City

The Law: Finding

The Law: Keeping

Wolves

Fireworks

Website

Also by Tanith Lee

About the Author

Copyright

Break the rules.

Traditional

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The idea for this book had been with me for over a year before I came to write it. But from the beginning I was certain I’d be writing about the heroine, Claidi, as if about another person, that is: ‘Claidi was this and that, and she …’ etc. Not once did I reckon I could write directly in her voice as her, that is, write, ‘I’.

Well, I started to work – but the book didn’t. I tried two or three approaches – nothing felt right. At last it was as if Claidi spoke in my ear: Just risk it! So I did. ‘I’ I wrote – and we were off!

Claidi remains one of my favourites.

THIS BOOK

Yes.

I stole this. This book.

I don’t know why. It looked – nice, I suppose, and nothing has been nice for years. Well, not often.

It was in her stationery chest, out of which, sometimes, she makes us – mostly me – get her a piece of silk-paper or thick parchment. Then she doodles a few stupid lines of awful ‘poetry’. Or a foul painting, like used washing-water in the Maids’ Hall with something dropped in it – lime-juice, or jam. And then we all have to applaud. ‘Oh! How clever you are, Lady Jade Leaf. What bright-shining genius!’ Because she’s royal. And we are not. Oh no. We couldn’t ever do anything wonderful like that.

Frankly, I think I could spit in a more interesting pattern. As for the poems—

Here is the latest example:

I drift like a petal all upon the air

And the roses bow.

Drift like a petal … She’s more like a hippopotamus in the river. I don’t mean fat – Lady Iris is fat, but she’s also glamorous and graceful. Jade Leaf is slim. But the way she moves—

If the roses bowed they did it because they fainted with fright, screaming: ‘Don’t let that great thing bash into me!’

(Having said this, I feel I should add hippopotami are graceful, too, underwater.) (Besides, a hippopotamus has never picked up its little ornamental cane and cracked me across the palms of my hands so they bled. Which Jade Leaf has done so many times, I can’t remember the number.)

If you found this, and are now reading it, need I ask you not to tell anyone? But hopefully you aren’t. I’m just imagining you.

And there’s someone banging for real on the door, which means I have to go and do something so much more important, that is, attend Jade Leaf.

I’ll write my name here. After that, you’ll know it’s me.

Claidi.

Midnight. (I just heard the House clock.) Sky a sort of thick stirred-up black, milky with stars.

Vile day. Daisy broke a vase and Lady Jade slapped and slapped her, till Daisy cowered on the floor. Then Lady JL kicked Daisy with her silk slippered foot. Daisy has bruises, and is also expected not to be given any dinner in the Maids’ Hall for nine nights. Pattoo and I put some of our food in a napkin and gave it to Daisy when we went to bed. Pattoo and Daisy are sleeping now.

I’m so tired I have to stop too.

Absolutely nothing to write. It’s seven days since the last thing I wrote. But nothing ever happens, here.

No, wrong. There was a dust storm yesterday that blew in from the Waste, and the slaves ran to work the fans, and pull up the slatted roofs over the best parts of the Garden. In the House all the windows and doors were shut and everybody was cooped up and bad-tempered.

LJL had a tantrum. She screamed and yelled and threw things. Then she was ill and had to lie down, and we put cloths soaked in cool scented water on her forehead. If it dripped in her eyes, she screamed again. We all had headaches, but no cool water-cloths for us.

I hate this place.

Nothing to write.

Except Pattoo and I were prevented by the Maids’ steward from putting aside food for Daisy. She cried